Modern casinos provide players with up to several thousand gaming machines, often, called “slot machines” to play for fun and enjoyment. These slot machines are typically connected to slot accounting and player system(s) which monitor the play of the machines for regulatory, accounting and performance purposes. Aside from the regulatory and accounting requirements, the player trading system provides a mechanism where player's activity can be tracked for purposes of marketing and providing the players with “comps”, e.g. promotions. These promotions offered to player by, for example, cash back, free rooms, meals, show tickets and the like server to drive loyalty between the casino and its players. Successful promotional programs can drive increased business and casino play and resulting revenues. Casinos often compete against one another for players using promotions.
Modern slot machines have one or more electronic displays such as CRT, plasma, LCD or other types of displays. It has been known to provide two displays on a slot machine—one for the display of the game content and its features and the other display dedicated to player tracking, advertising, promotional and related information. It is also known to provide one or more displays with “picture-in-picture” capability to display game content and player tracking or other information, such as live video of a sports event, on one or more displays. Suffice it to say, the player tracking system interfaces with a display at the slot machine to inform the player and provide apparatus for the player to interact with the system. This interaction may be to download value credits to the slot machine for play, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,217,190 titled “Cashless Gaming System Apparatus and Method” and issued May 15, 2007 to Aristocrat Technologies, Inc. (the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference) or to download promotional credits for play and the slot machine. Typically promotional credits cannot be cashed out for value but instead must be played in the slot machine.
Player tracking systems operate by issuing a tracking instrument to players such as a machine readable card. These cards can have a machine readable bar code or can be a smart card. When the card is issued to the player, identification information is taken from the player and a player account is established at the player tracking database. When a player plays a machine, they insert their card with a card reader at the machine. The reader provides an interface with the player tracking system and opens the player's account. As the player makes wagers to play the machine the system tracks information such as time, date, coin-in (amount wagered), jackpots paid (amount paid out to the player) and so forth. Based upon the player's play, such as coin-in, the player is awarded “comp points” which, depending upon the parameters of the player loyalty program can be redeemed for promotional credits, cash, merchandise and services.
It has been known to provide a system driven secondary game though the player tracking interface. In this secondary game the system, at certain intervals and to players meeting eligibility requirements including at least having their loyalty card read at the gaming machine, issues a Bingo card to the player and initiates a system wide bingo game. At the player tracking interface the player's card is displayed and any matches are marked and depending upon the number of matches, the player wins a prize.
For slot machines it has also been known to provide a secondary game. For example in U.S. Pat. No. 7,000,921 titled “System and Method for Playing a Bonus Game” issued Feb. 21, 2006 to Bally Gaming” (the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference) discloses a game where, based upon a trigger event such as symbol combinations in a base game, time of day or detection of a particular player, a bonus game is provided. The bonus game provides cards from an abridged deck of playing cards and the player can discard and draw to make a final hand. The final hand is then evaluated against a pay table to determine if the payer is entitled to an award.
In addition to slot machines, secondary or promotional games can also be employed with other electronic devices such as cellular telephones, PDAs or other such devices. These secondary games may offer chances at promotions based upon operation of the device to encourage use of the device and promote loyalty with, for example, the cellular service provider.
There is a need for a system based promotional game which provides users or players with a degree of strategy and control in reaching a winning or losing outcome.
There is a need for a secondary promotional game where continued usage or play can increase the player's chances of producing a winning outcome.